you don’t have good data, you won’t have good information
that can be used as an asset and for strategic decision-making,” Fahy says.

Recognition of data governance’s importance has grown
rapidly in a short period of time, the white paper notes.

“It is of interest to note that the 2014 IG survey respon-dents ranked ‘lack of trust or confidence in data’ as thelast/lowest level driver,” the paper states. “This could in-dicate that responders had a higher sense of the quality/trustworthiness of their data at that time. As organizationsprogress with their analytics efforts many are recognizingthat added focus on data quality and on data governanceefforts are critical to achieving trust in their data and in-formation.”Data governance is critical for many IG functions and pro-vider operations—it enables more accurate data analytics,which providers can use for business intelligence and theircompetitive advantage, Downing says.

For example, every emergency department (ED) is trying tofigure out how to get through patients faster to help decreasewait times. As long as 10 years ago, Downing says one majorhospital chain in the Nashville area bought billboards thatcould be continually updated with up-to-the-minute informa-tion about wait times in their facilities—an early illustration ofthe power of data and metrics. Having good data helps admin-istrators understand when their facilities experience the high-est patient volumes, which enables them to more efficientlymake staffing decisions.

“If a CEO says ‘I want to know how many patients had a
fall when the nurse was on the 11th hour of their shift?’
they want to be able to pull a report out of their EHR [elec-tronic health record] that shows how many risk factors
there are. However, the EHR might only be able to show
the number of falls, but there’s nowhere they can look to
study data on nurses shifts,” Downing explains. “That’s
the sort of thing you’re talking about when you start talking about data governance. ‘What’s our data quality, our
ability to look at data across systems?’ That’s why it [data
governance] comes up on the top of the list.”

Upcoming IG Activities

AHIMA’s recent IG survey and white paper will help set the
tone and direction of the association’s IG work in 2018 and
beyond. Now that they have a firmer understanding of just
where the industry currently stands in terms of IG adoption,
AHIMA’s IG team can begin updating training materials
and content for organizations interested in launching their
own programs.

Fahy says her team is developing a training program for
IG consultants built around the Information Governance

Priorities for Information Governance

ACCORDING TO THE 2017 IG survey, data governance had the highest priority for IG projects at 43. 1 percent. And considering the fact that the two next-highest priority projects (Data Dictionaries and Data and Record Inventories) are seen
as a part of data governance/data management projects, that brings the overall percentage for data governance priorities
to 76.5 percent.